Her Texas Rescue Doctor. Caro Carson
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kept his expression neutral for the sake of the little boy on the gurney. According to the chart, the child was eight years old. This parent was acting like his kid was an NFL superstar. “Justin, can you tell me where it hurts?”
The child looked up at him silently and pointed at his left leg.
“Okay, I’ll check out your leg. Anywhere else I should look?”
“My chin hurts, too. I hit it right here, and—”
“Just tell him the important stuff, son. Shake off the little things, like a man.”
Take it down a notch, Bubba. That was what Alex wanted to say. As Dr. Gregory, of course, he didn’t. Part of every accident evaluation included screening for head trauma, particularly since this child had just reported that he’d sustained a hit to the chin. The screening could be as simple as listening to the child relate his injuries logically and with clear speech.
In other words, the father needed to shut up.
Alex crossed to the sink and washed his hands in preparation for an exam. His little patient was so miserable and tense, manipulating that injured leg was going to be an ordeal, unless he could get the child to relax at least a little bit. Confronting his father would only make the child more tense.
Alex began drying his hands on rough brown paper towels. “So, Justin, how’d you hurt your leg?”
“S-s-soccer.”
“He was playing an aggressive forward position and he—”
Enough. Alex turned abruptly to face the father. In silence, he held the man’s gaze. It helped that Alex was as tall as the father. He certainly lacked the beer belly, but he looked ol’ Bubba in the eye. With his back to the boy, Alex let his expression show his disapproval as he dried his hands.
“—and he cut the ball back to this rookie, who...ah...” The father’s monologue came to a confused halt under Alex’s glare.
Alex crushed the paper towels into a ball and pitched them into the trash can. Deliberately, taking his time, Alex pointed at the chair in the corner. The father sank slowly into the empty chair.
Alex turned back to Justin. He started with the child’s arm, knowing it was uninjured and wouldn’t cause him any pain while he lifted it and bent the elbow, testing the range of motion, a way to let the child get familiar with the exam. “Do you play any other sports?”
The child darted a fearful glance at his father, making sure it was okay to talk. “Dad coaches me in basketball, too. Right, Dad?”
Dad hesitated and glanced at Alex before answering. “And baseball. We’re doing baseball this year.”
Justin looked from his father back to Alex. “And b-baseball.”
“Wow, that’s a lot of sports.” Alex hadn’t missed the child’s fearful glance. He took his stethoscope off his neck. It gave him the perfect excuse to lift the boy’s shirt to listen to his heart. He’d be looking for bruises, too. Usually, an overbearing soccer dad was just that, but sometimes that overbearing personality became violent, and children could be the victims.
“What sports do you do?” the boy asked.
Alex smiled a bit. Kids only knew their own worlds. If their world was an endless cycle of practices and games, they assumed everyone was involved in sports. Thankfully, little Justin had no bruises. His life with his dad centered on sports whether he liked it or not, but it appeared his life was free of physical violence. Not like Alex’s had once been.
“I’m not on any teams like you are. I ride my bike a lot, though.”
He could’ve felt the father’s derision even if he hadn’t heard the snort of disgust. Alex was used to it from a certain type of man. Alex had been raised in Europe, in the dangerous, crumbling Soviet Bloc. The best moments of his grim childhood had been seeing the professional cyclists in their brightly colored kits go whizzing through his town, training for the Tour de France. When Alex had escaped to America as a teen, he’d been shocked that his new schoolmates didn’t know any pro cyclists by name.
“I can ride a two-wheeler,” Justin said.
“Yeah? That’s great.” Alex started palpating the child’s good leg, picking up the diminutive foot in his hand and rotating it to test the ankle. “Do you have a favorite movie?”
The kid lit up like a lightbulb. “I like Star Wars. Do you know that one? And I like Guardians of the Galaxy. And I like Space Maze.”
“I’m going to bend your knee now.” Alex wanted to keep Justin focused on something else. “Who’s your favorite character out of the whole Maze world?”
“I like Eva. You know, Princess Picasso.”
Dad snorted again. “A princess? Goya the Destroya, that was the best guy in the movie.”
“But Dad, Goya was a bad guy. Eva was the good guy.” Justin looked ready to cry, and Alex didn’t think it was because his leg hurt him.
“So what? Goya kicked azzz...uh, butt.”
Justin showed a little spark of defiance. “Eva had a cool laser gun. She kept it hidden in her boot.”
Good for you, kid. You’re going to need that stubbornness with a father like yours.
Alex had liked the Eva Picasso character, too. “She was really brave. She saved her people from the maze. I’m going to need you to be really brave for a minute. I’m going to move your knee as far as it will go.” It was a matter of millimeters before Justin responded in pain and Alex stopped. He patted the kid on his good leg. “Do you remember what the princess kept in her other boot?”
Justin’s grimace relaxed a bit. “Yeah, that really cool knife that could cut right through anything. Even metal.”
“You’re talking ’bout the chick who wore the boots?” His father sat back, sounding relieved. “She was hot. Sophia Jackson, that’s the one. Okay, yeah, the boots chick was hot.”
“And brave,” Justin said.
“And brave,” Alex agreed as he stood up. “I don’t think the bone in your leg is broken, but I need to get an X-ray to be sure. It won’t hurt. An X-ray is a special kind of camera.”
“I know,” Justin said. “It can take a picture right through your clothes. Princess Picasso could get one with her boots on.”
Dear old Dad couldn’t help himself. “I bet the doc would love to get a picture of Sophia Jackson right through her clothes. Who wouldn’t? Am I right?”
Alex didn’t reply. What he’d like to see was Princess Picasso giving this Neanderthal one of her go-to-hell looks.
A brave princess in his ER?
That would make his day.
Grace was a coward. She darted a glance around the van, petrified of getting caught.
Don’t be such a scaredy-cat. All eyes are on Sophia, anyway.
Grace pulled her sister’s phone out of her bag. What she was about to do was for Sophia’s own good. When the lock screen lit up, she tapped in the four-digit access code.
It was rejected.
The code was supposed to be the year Grace had been born. Although it surprised the few people who learned of it, Grace was actually the baby sister, only twenty-five to Sophia’s twenty-nine. Her big sister loved her. Her big sister used baby Grace’s birth year as her code. Only it didn’t work now.
How old was Deezee? Grace typed in his birth year. It worked.
The stab to her heart was starting to feel too familiar. With